John Webster wrote The Duchess of Malfi to be performed in a candlelit, Jacobean theatre. In other words, this 17th-century revenge tragedy is ready-made for the shadowy space of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, complete with scenes that take place in total darkness and nasty reveals with severed limbs. Ten years after this theatre first opened its doors with Dominic Dromgoole’s production, director Rachel Bagshaw’s Globe debut proves less interested in atmospheric horror effects than the emotional journeys of its protagonists.
Oliver Johnstone is a Ferdinand so plausible and affectionate that it seems quite possible this will be the story of a loving brother driven mad by his wayward sister. In a sharp black suit and shirt surrounded by fantastically colourful courtiers, there’s more than a hint of Succession’s Roman Roy about this entitled boy, his petulance and cruelty born of arrested development. Yet it’s impossible to doubt the sincerity of Ferdinand’s feelings: when the Duchess tells him she has defied him to marry Antonio, he cries.
Francesca Mills demonstrates her range in the title role, from her comic wooing of Antonio (a likable Olivier Huband) and the tenderness of their relationship to her furious grief at his murder. At first she seems the sweet younger sister to her brothers: the more she fights for her womanhood, the more adolescent they appear. Even the Cardinal, the most cynical of the onstage killers, has layers as played by Jamie Ballard: the scene in which he tries to calm his increasingly frenetic brother is unexpectedly moving.
While Bagshaw coaxes intriguing performances from her cast, it’s less clear what meaning she is teasing from the play. Early on, characters depart from the text to speak lines harvested from more recent tales of misogyny – one courtier repeats home secretary James Cleverly’s joke about “a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night” – a trick that’s soon abandoned. A later mention of dermal filler adds nothing to Webster’s exquisite description of a woman whose beautifying technique turns her skin from “nutmeg-grater” to “abortive hedgehog”.
Toxic masculinity is heavily referenced: during the Duchess’s imprisonment alongside her spirited right-hand woman Cariola (Shazia Nicholls), the various madmen that Ferdinand unleashes on his sister spout incel-inspired bile, menacing the women with violent intent. Both mechanism and message are considerably less subtle than the villains of the piece, not least Arthur Hughes’s sympathetic Bosola.
This Malfi also goes hard on the humour and, while Martin McDonagh’s work is proof that a stage full of corpses can be funny and terrible, here the comic treatment too often intrudes on pathos – not least in the final scene, when you sense that you’re supposed to leave with a smile, happy that all the horrible men are dead.
• At Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, until 14 April
